Federal Education Minister Jason Clare says he and his state counterparts face “a massive challenge” to fix teacher shortages, as he meets with them for the first time today.
Key points:
State, territory and federal education ministers are meeting for the first time since the federal election
Paid internships, study incentives, shorter courses and salary boosts will be considered
NSW has proposed salaries of more than $110,000 for highly accomplished teachers
The first meeting of education ministers since Anthony Albanese’s election win will be attended not just by politicians but also teachers, principals and representatives from the unions and independent and Catholic school groups.
Mr Clare told ABC Radio National that classrooms were growing, but fewer teachers were available to run them.
“You have more and more kids going to school … at the same time we have seen a drop of 16 per cent of young students going into teacher training,” he said.
“There aren’t many more jobs more important than being a teacher and we just don’t have enough of them.”
The graduation rate for teachers is also far lower than for other university students, sitting at just 50 per cent compared to an average of 70 per cent for other degrees.
Mr Clare said the government had already committed to offering $40,000 bursaries to some students, but state and territory ministers will today also consider whether students and people seeking to retrain as teachers should be offered paid internships or other upfront incentives to study.
He said the government could also consider reintroducing shorter one-year education diplomas.
Jason Clare says ministers will consider paid internships, shorter courses and pay incentives for teachers.(ABC)
The NSW government has already backed the Commonwealth government to consider university incentives to attract and improve retention of students studying education.
It is arguing against a national push on teacher pay, saying that it should be left to the states — and it’s considering an overhaul on pay agreements, proposing to offer $73,737 for new graduates and a salary up to $117,060 for teachers who gain accreditation as a highly accomplished or lead teacher.
NSW has also proposed employing dedicated workers to help ease administrative burdens for teachers, something Mr Clare supported.
Queensland is also negotiating pay rises for teachers, and the education union has agreed in principle to 4 per cent yearly increases for the next two years and 3 per cent the year after, with potential adjustments for inflation.
Mr Clare said salaries for new graduates were already attractive, but that pay prospects tailed off as teachers progressed in their careers.
“The pay that teachers get when they start is pretty competitive, then it goes up in grades for about 10 years, and then it tops out,” he said.
“After 10 years, if you’re looking for a pay rise you either have to leave the classroom to become an assistant principal or you leave teaching altogether.
Five days a week, Karl* goes to work as a high school teacher, planning lessons, marking tests, and dealing with admin. Then, on Sundays, he puts on his uniform and works a sixth day at a local shop.
It’s a long week even though, technically, he’s a part-time teacher.
Despite only being contracted to work two full days at the school — and three half-days — the amount of unpaid overtime needed to prepare for the next day’s classes quickly fills the spare time.
Which is exactly why Karl chose not to take on full-time teaching when he recently graduated, despite a widespread shortage of Australian teachers.
“I kept hearing horror stories of the first-year — early teachers they burn out, they struggle, and I was concerned about it,” he says. “I haven’t sat through a degree so I can do a job for a couple of years and then burnout. I want to do this for a long time, so I need to pace myself.”
Horror stories, like those that led Karl to choose his phased entry into the profession, have become all too common in the teaching industry.
Correna Haythorpe, the national president of the Australian Education Union (AEU) which represents public school teachers across the country, believes the attrition rate for teachers could be as high as 30 per cent within the first five years in some parts of the country.
The cause is often chalked up to “burnout”, a far-reaching condition that can be driven by ballooning workloads, the expansion of responsibility and periods of high stress, like the COVID pandemic.
“The big word that I would use to describe what’s happening to teachers is demoralisation,” says Gabbie Stroud, a former teacher (or “recovering teacher”, as she describes it) and author of a book about her own burnout.
Former teacher Gabbie Stroud recently answered the call to return to casual teaching due to staff shortages. (Supplied: Gabbie Stroud)
“But how that’s happening is broad and varied: it’s increasing workload, it’s data collection, administration and standardization, and all of those activities that take teachers away from the core business of teaching.”
These issues and more will form part of a roundtable discussion between national, state and territory education ministers on Friday, as they look for ways to attract new teachers to the profession, retain existing staff and stem the chronic shortages plaguing schools.
It comes as Department of Education modeling revealed demand for high school teachers was set to outstrip graduates by more than 4,000 over the next three years.
An issues paper published by the department ahead of the meeting described the staffing challenges as “unprecedented” and the “single biggest issue” facing all school sectors.
While COVID had exacerbated the issue, it said that it was only one part of the problem and perceptions of low pay, unfavorable working conditions, and increasing workloads were also partly to blame.
All these factors contributed to Karl’s decision to go part-time, despite choosing to get into the industry precisely because he saw an opportunity for increased job security.
Even in his first year on the job, he says he’s regularly working upwards of five hours above what he is contracted for each week — a situation he describes as a “pretty common story.”
“I’ve got a lot of teachers around me, and even when they’ve got 10 or 20 years experience, they’re going: ‘yeah, wow, this is nuts’,” he says. “There’s a lot of dazed looks, I don’t want to overstate it, but people are walking around like the walking dead, really knocked around.”
How did we get here?
While teacher shortages — especially in certain regions and for particular subjects — aren’t new, Haythorpe says the current situation “is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”
“We’re in a perfect storm right now and this is happening right across the nation. It’s not only schools in rural and regional locations that are experiencing shortages,” she says. “There’s no doubt that we’re at crisis point.”
Stroud, who left her job as a primary school teacher in 2016 due to what she believed was burnout, says she prefers the term “teacher drought” to shortage, because “when we think about a drought then we start to think about what’s happening in the environment to cause this”.
Teachers are reportedly often working in excess of 50 hours a week.(AAP: Mick Tsikas)
“I suspect that if everyone who held a teaching degree went back into teaching, we would not have a shortage. So, something has driven them out,” she says. And what’s particularly alarming, she says, is how quickly early career teachers are tapping out.
So, what’s causing it? People we spoke to for this story repeated that workload is the major — if not the number one — issue. According to Haythorpe, teachers are frequently working in excess of 50 hours a week (the standard full-time working week is 38 hours), a figure which is only growing. “COVID exacerbated that but it didn’t create the problem,” she says.
Many teachers also report feeling unprepared to enter the classroom, she says, due to increased expectations to deal with behavioral issues and the need to keep up with changing curriculums.
Earlier this year, a Grattan Institute survey of more than 5,000 teachers and school leaders found more than 90 per cent of teachers felt they didn’t have enough time to prepare adequately for classroom teaching and many said they felt overwhelmed by expectations.
It’s a familiar story to Chris*, who left his job in a mainstream high school after almost 30 years due to a case of burnout that left him in need of psychological treatment. Asked what led him to that point, he rattles off a long list: loss of status, bureaucracy, isolation, and as always, workload.
“If people didn’t have mortgages to pay, there would be no senior teachers left,” he says. “It’s not about the money, it’s about the workload … smaller classes, less administrative burden.”
Stroud echoes a similar sentiment, that more money isn’t the answer for teachers already in the deep end. “Burnout is burnout, demoralization is demoralization,” she says. “The day I left that classroom, you could have told me it was a million dollar a year job and I still would have left.”
How does pay stack up?
The reality, however, is that when it comes to employment money does matter — especially when it comes to attracting high-achievers to the profession and retaining experienced teachers with a myriad of transferable skills.
It’s also part of the equation for Karl as he considers when he might want to make the move to full-time. “Do I want to risk burning myself out for $75,000 a year? No. Once I’m worth $100,000 a year, is it worth maybe increasing it then?” he says. “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it is the extra spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.”
According to a 2019 report from the Grattan Institute, the starting salary for most classroom teachers in Australia is between $65,000 and $70,000, topping out at just over $100,000 after about a decade in the workforce. While the starting salary is competitive with other professions, over time teachers quickly fall behind their peers in other industries.
Among proposals to be discussed on Friday is a plan to give some senior teachers a 40 per cent pay bump to take on so-called “master teacher” roles. Paid teaching internships for professionals from other industries are also on the table.
New federal Education Minister Jason Clare will meet with his state and territory counterparts on Friday to discuss widespread teacher shortages. (AAP: Aaron Bunch)
“One thing is certain, we’re not going to fix this problem by just doing the same thing time after time,” federal Education Minister Jason Clare told the ABC last week. “We’ve got to look for new ideas that are going to help not just fix the shortage of teachers but also raise the performance of our kids.”
The Grattan Institute has previously recommended a similar framework to retain and attract people to the workforce, including the creation of two new expert teacher roles that would be paid at a significantly higher salary.
“One of the really key strategies, we believe, to support the workforce going forward is to get much better at recognizing teaching expertise,” says Jordana Hunter, education program director at the Grattan Institute.
“We’ve called for several years now for a reboot of the teacher career structure to introduce an instructional specialist position — a person who is able to demonstrate exceptional, subject-specific teaching practice and has the ability to work with other teachers in their school .”
Haythorpe of the AEU acknowledges the need to find ways to attract teachers to the classroom, but worries about proposals that “pit teachers against teachers”.
“One of my concerns with the master teacher proposal is it really focuses on a small, select group of teachers. This is a problem for everyone and we need appropriate pay and conditions for everyone in the profession.”
So, what’s the solution?
When it comes to workload — something Hunter also says she hears time and time again — the Grattan Institute argues there needs to be a rethink of how teachers can best be supported so they’re able to focus on students.
“One of the things we’ve looked at is how we can free up teacher schedules, so they can really focus on teaching,” Hunter says.
This may look like redeploying teaching assistants and other non-teaching staff to take on extracurricular and supervision activities, allowing teachers more time for lesson planning and academic preparation.
Hunter says they also heard from more than half the teachers they surveyed that they feel like they’re expected to “reinvent the wheel” when it comes to lesson planning. “It’s really hitting students hard … this lack of time for teachers to think really carefully about how they’re going to deliver their lessons because instead they’re scrambling on Google and Pintrest.”
One way to alleviate this pressure, according to the Grattan Institute, could be the creation at a school level of high-quality lesson plans that are made available to all teachers to draw upon.
While there are plenty of details to be worked out, Hunter says one thing is clear: there’s no point reaching for a band-aid solution to the shortages without also dealing with the problems on the ground. “Obviously we need to address shortages, but we also have to make it a rewarding job now and keep the great teachers we already have in the classroom,” she says. “Because it’s one of the most important jobs in Australia.”
But while education leaders discuss where to go from here, the reality is already being felt in schools as they scramble for relief teachers and class numbers blow out.
For Gabbie Stroud, that means she could soon find herself somewhere she thought she’d never be again: at the front of the classroom.
A recent newsletter from her child’s school on the NSW south coast included a line begging local parents with a teaching degree to consider coming back to the classroom. “These are heartfelt pleas coming from our schools saying: ‘we’re not coping’,” she says.
So reluctantly, after six years out of the classroom, she’s signed up for casual relief teaching.
“I know it’s the right thing to step up and lend a hand,” she says. “But I don’t feel great about it. This is not the right way, none of this is the right way.”
Rebekah Maslen has been working hard to prepare herself for a new career.
Key points:
The transition to Workforce Australia has been described as “appalling”
Some students say they have been told by job agencies to complete extra mutual obligations, despite rules stating they do not need to
Job providers and the government concede there have been challenges but they remain committed to the system
The Ocean Grove-based student is completing a diploma of early childhood education and care, which includes 24 hours per week on placement, plus about 15 hours of study and two days of classes.
She is also one of many Australians struggling to come to grips with the biggest overhaul of unemployment services in decades.
“I would say the transition has been appalling,” she said.
“The way I’ve been treated … and the lack of information around how to use the system in detail [has] not been a very good experience.”
At the start of July, more than 800,000 jobseekers transferred to Workforce Australia, which has been pitched as a more flexible alternative to the much-maligned jobactive system.
The changes were passed under the Morrison government with Labor’s support prior to the May election. Contracts with job service providers — private companies paid by the government to get people into work — worth $7 billion were also signed.
To continue receiving the JobSeeker payment, most people need to perform mutual obligations — tasks set by the government aimed at enhancing employability.
Under jobactive, mutual obligations most commonly revolved around job applications, and jobseekers needed to submit 20 a month. That requirement could be waived if a jobseeker was completing a Certificate III course or above, which includes diplomas.
Now, those required to complete mutual obligations have transitioned to a system where they earn points for completing a wider range of activities, such as short courses, getting a drivers license or attending a job fair.
If they do not receive a certain number of points each month, their payments can be suspended.
Rebekah Maslen has had trouble getting her placement hours recognized.(ABC NewsNorman Hermant)
Ms Maslen said she was told by her job provider that to comply with the new system she must apply for at least four other jobs every month on top of her diploma and placement.
She also said she had consistent difficulty finding a way to get points credit for her placement hours through the online portal.
“The things you’re asked to do for getting points, things like getting a forklift license … I don’t find very helpful as someone who’s studying,” she said.
‘It’s really demoralizing’
The government made a series of tweaks to the design of Workforce Australia days before it launched.
Employment Minister Tony Burke said at the time that the changes would ensure someone participating in full-time study or training that improved their long-term job prospects “would not be putting their qualifications at risk”.
However Ms Maslen said that was what she felt Workforce Australia was doing to her.
“I feel penalized for choosing to study and to do a placement,” she said.
Rebekah Maslen says her experience with Workforce Australia has been poor.(ABC NewsNorman Hermant)
Ms Maslen said she had also been frustrated by experiences with her job provider.
“I often come back from my interviews feeling very frustrated and often in tears because I don’t understand how to use the system,” she said.
“I kind of feel like I’m being made to do all these things just so someone in an office can tick a box. I don’t really feel like that’s fair and it’s really quite demoralizing.”
Asked about mutual obligations requirements for students, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) said people undertaking approved full-time courses shorter than 12 months, such as Ms Maslen, should not have job-search requirements.
“Providers have been instructed to reduce the minimum job search requirement to zero for these participants. The department’s Digital Services Contact Center can also remove the job search requirement for those participants,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
‘Designed to punish people’
The overall transition to Workforce Australia has been heavily criticized, with jobseekers and advocates voicing confusion and concern ahead of the launch.
Outside those affecting students, a raft of other issues has surfaced since the scheme launched. The ABC has heard reports of jobseekers:
Being recommended jobs based in states they do not live in and requiring qualifications they do not have
Traveling hundreds of kilometers for short face-to-face appointments with providers which they said could have been done remotely
Entering information on the Workforce Australia app or website which was not later accessible to providers
Having to complete skills seminars on things they already know and complete questionnaires assessing whether “zest” was a character strength of theirs
Jay Coonan, a spokesperson from the Antipoverty Centre, said jobseekers were not being treated as individuals and had been left to “figure out the system themselves”.
“It’s much the same [as jobactive]. It was never about making it more flexible for people, even though that’s what they marketed it as,” he said.
Jay Coonan says the rollout of Workforce Australia has been “a mess”.(ABC NewsNorman Hermant)
Mr Coonan said many of the issues to arise were foreseeable and things overall were “a mess”.
“There are people out there who are pretty much working full time … but are still forced to do mutual obligations simply because the system is designed to punish people who need help from the government.”
The DEWR spokesperson said the app and website were continuously reviewed to ensure they “meet the needs of users”, and jobseekers concerned by how their appointments were being managed could contact it via the National Customer Service line.
‘Everyone needs to be aligned’
Mr Burke last week flagged concern with the rollout and granted user experience had varied “wildly”.
A parliamentary committee has been set up to scrutinize the program, but will not report back until September 2023.
Sally Sinclair, CEO of the National Employment Services Association, the peak body for the contracted employment services sector, said she thought the rollout was going “relatively well” given the scale of the transition.
“Everybody is working very hard to make this the most positive experience possible for both the participants and employers … but it’s going to take a bit of time to build,” she said.
Ms Sinclair was pleased the parliamentary committee would look at the “bumps in the road”, but said she remained supportive of the system.
“The realities are that this is a large-scale government investment with a lot of contractual requirements … but we need to make sure that everybody is aligned.”
The government has indicated it may make further changes before the inquiry reports.
For Ms Maslen and other anxious jobseekers, that cannot come soon enough.
“It doesn’t make it easy for anyone studying to be able to meet their points,” she said.
A University of Western Australia student gate crashed a press conference being held by Premier Mark McGowan and had to be ushered away by his security team as she demanded to know whether abortion would be made free across the State.
The female student approached Mr McGowan as he was preparing to answer questions from reporters after announcing a contract had been awarded for the installation of 98 electric vehicle chargers as part of WA’s electric highway.
“I’m a student here at UWA and I just wanted to know if you were planning to make abortion free in WA,” the young woman said as she walked towards Mr McGowan.
The student was dealt with by the Premier’s bodyguards. Credit: Andrew Richie/The West Australian
The Premier’s minders immediately jumped into action, getting between the woman and Mr McGowan and attempting to move her away from the gathered media.
She asked one of Mr McGowan’s male bodyguards why he had placed his hands on her but seemed to accept the explanation when told he was part of the Premier’s personal security team.
“I just, I don’t understand why Mr McGowan can’t just answer my question,” she shouted as she was moved away.
“I’m just a student at UWA and I want to know if abortion will be made free?”
The woman was ushered away during the press conference. Credit: Andrew Richie/The West Australian
Mr McGowan remained silent throughout the encounter, but later addressed the protester’s question — after she had been moved well away from the site of the press conference — when it was repeated by the media.
“We’re reviewing the law in relation to abortion reform as to whether or not further reforms need to be put in place to make it nationally consistent with other states,” the Premier said.
“You may not know but I was in the Parliament when abortion was made legal in Western Australia. I’m one of the few members still left from that period and I voted in favor of it.”
Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson in June revealed work was underway to modernize WA’s abortion laws, which have been described as among the most oppressive in Australia.
Security staff swoop on the UWA student. Credit: Andrew Richie/The West Australian
“Cost is an issue and… women do fly interstate to access abortions past actually about 15 weeks. There are only two private providers and often their hours are limited,” she said.
Abortions cost vary from state to state and can run into hundreds of dollars depending on the medications or surgical procedures required.
In WA, women who seek an abortion after 20 weeks must have their request reviewed by an “ethics panel” consisting of six medical practitioners, two of whom must agree the mother or fetus has a severe medical condition that justifies the procedure.’
Mr McGowan said he understood the review of WA’s abortion regime would be completed by the end of the year.
“It’s obviously come into more focus recently with the Supreme Court decision in America and we’re looking at what we need to do to make it more nationally consistent and if there are anomalies that make it difficult for women in certain circumstances,” he said .
“They’re the sorts of things we’re looking at changing and repairing.”
Indigenous people from America and Australia have gathered in the Red Center with the collective goal of saving their languages from extinction.
Native American language experts are sharing their secrets of success in a four-day conference attended by more than 100 people from communities across Australia.
From north-western California, Julian Lang firsthand witnessed the revival of his own native tongue—the Karuk language.
“One person teaches another person and that person becomes a seed for so many more,” Mr Lang explained.
“We wanted to create five new speakers in five years, and three years later we have five new speakers.”
No books needed to revive languages
Twelve Native American revivalists will be sharing the “master-apprentice program” their ancestors developed more than three decades ago.
The program does away with books, pen and paper, and doesn’t rely on a curriculum.
Instead, they speak about everyday things, slowly acquiring words and context.
Indigenous Australians and Native Americans have gathered at the Red Center to learn from each other about how to revive their languages.(ABC News: Xavier Martin)
Julian Lang is one of the founders of the program and said it takes dedication and time — he estimates about three years and 900 hours.
Once an apprentice, now he is teaching Tori McConnell to reconnect more fully with her Karuk culture.
“They used to pick up young native kids and take them to school and strip them of their culture and their language and their identity,” the 22-year-old explained.
“We are reconnecting with who we are in those pieces that the schools and the churches kind of stripped away.”
“We were told never to speak our language again”
This story of language extinction is universal.
Australian government policies actively sought to extinguish Indigenous languages up until the 1970s — like Pertame, also known as Southern Arrernte, originally spoken around the Finke River south of Alice Springs.
Pertame woman, Aunty Kathleen Bradshaw-Swan, recalled how they would yarn in secret when they were children.
Pertame woman Aunty Kathleen Bradshaw-Swan was told at school to never speak her language.(ABC News: Stephanie Boltje)
“At school, we were told not to speak that lingo and we were told never to speak our language again,” Aunty Kathleen said.
“My sister Christobel was saying, sometimes she got hit by the headmaster for speaking the language.”
They are two of about 20 people who fluently speak Pertame.
The latest census found 167 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are still spoken in homes across Australia.
But as many as 110 languages are severely or critically endangered.
“I am sad about our language being taken away in the past but with these people coming there are new beginnings for us,” Aunty Kathleen Bradshaw-Swan told The Drum.
The immersion technique
The UN has declared this next 10 years as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
In 2019 Aunty Kathleen and her granddaughter traveled to New York to hear about techniques that could fast-track the learning process, and they liked what they heard about the Master-Apprentice Program.
This one-on-one, or breath-to-breath, immersion technique is being shared at community-led The Pertame School in Alice Springs.
Samantha Penangka Armstrong is helping to run the conference with The Batchelor Institute and is also one of the apprentices.
“It’s reverting back to our old ways where we just only spoke language with our elders,” she said.
Samantha Penangka Armstrong is learning Pertame using the Master-Apprentice method developed by Native American language revivalists.(ABC News: Stephanie Boltje)
“It could be asking about a certain plant, what it’s used for, when it’s in season, if animals eat it or if humans eat it, getting the kids up for school — it’s learning Pertame [by speaking] Allow me.”
Through this conference, it’s hoped the next generation across Australia will benefit from the Native American experience.
“It’s really important for them to learn and get their language back,” Samanatha Penangka Armstrong told The Drum.
“It is not only just for their identity, but really ties into connection to country.”
“You can’t go onto country unless you actually speak to country in your own language.”
Google is rolling out its Read Along learning tool for the web.
The app, which is supposed to help children learn how to read, has been exclusive to Android since it was released in India in 2019. (It was called Bolo at the time; Google changed the name for its global launch in 2020.) Now it’ll finally be available to kids without Android devices.
“With the web version,” Google says, “parents can let their children use Read Along on bigger screens by simply logging into a browser from laptops or PCs at readalong.google.com.” The site works in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; support for additional browsers is “coming soon.”
Read Along has children read stories—which are curated by Google and feature varying subject matter and levels of complexity—to a “reading assistant” called Diya that “listens and gives both correctional and encouraging feedback to help kids develop their reading skills.”
Google says all of the audio processing required to enable this functionality happens on-device; the recordings aren’t supposed to be sent to its servers. More information about the kinds of data the company is collecting via the web version of Read Along is available via its privacy policy.
Google says more than 30 million children have read over 120 million stories via Read Along since the app’s debut in 2019. (Which suggests that many kids, or their parents, read just one story before they stop using the app.) The company will release more stories later this year.
MARSHALL, N.C. — When schools in one North Carolina county reopen later this month, new security measures will include stocking AR-15 rifles for school resource officers to use in the event of an active shooter.
Spurred by the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead in May, school officials and Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood have placed one of the semiautomatic rifles in each of the county’s six schools. Each of the guns will be locked inside a safe, Harwood said.
The North Carolina school district and sheriff’s office are collaborating to enhance security after the Uvalde shooting revealed systemic failures and “egregiously poor decision-making,” resulting in more than an hour of chaos before the gunman was finally confronted and killed by law enforcement, according to to a report written by an investigative committee of the Texas House of Representatives.
“Those officers were in that building for so long, and that suspect was able to infiltrate that building and injure and kill so many kids,” Harwood told the Asheville Citizen Times. “I just want to make sure my deputies are prepared in the event that happens.”
The idea of having AR-15s in schools does not sit well with Dorothy Espelage, a UNC Chapel Hill professor in the School of Education who has conducted decades of study and research on school safety and student well-being.
“What’s going to happen is we’re going to have accidents with these guns,” Espelage told WLOS-TV. Just the presence of an SRO increases violence in the schools. There’s more arrests of kids. Why is it that they have to have these AR-15s? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Madison County Schools Superintendent Will Hoffman said school administrators have been meeting regularly with local law enforcement officials, including Harwood, to discuss the updated safety measures.
Harwood said the county’s school resource officers have been training with instructors from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College.
Harwood said the safes where the AR-15s will be kept will also hold ammunition and breaching tools for barricaded doors.
“We’ll have those tools to be able to breach that door if needed. I do not want to have to run back out to the car to grab an AR, because that’s time wasted. Hopefully we’ll never need it, but I want my guys to be as prepared as prepared can be,” he said.
Schools are scheduled to reopen Aug. 22, according to the Madison County Schools website.
While the optics of school resource officers potentially handling AR-15s in schools may be discomforting to some, Harwood said he believes it is a necessary response.
“I hate that we’ve come to a place in our nation where I’ve got to put a safe in our schools, and lock that safe up for my deputies to be able to acquire an AR-15. But, we can shut it off and say it won’t happen in Madison County, but we never know,” Harwood said.
Reducing access to humanities degrees will reduce critical thinking among the population and disadvantaged regional students, academics have warned, as Federation University prepares to ax its Bachelor of Arts (BA) program from 2023.
Key points:
Federation University is preparing to ax its Bachelor of Arts degree from 2023
The Federal Education Department will review recent fee-hikes for humanities degrees
Academics say art degrees play a critical role in teaching young people to think critically
Making the decision less than two years after the former federal government doubled fees for humanities degrees, the university blamed the cut on declining enrollments from international and domestic students.
“Student commencements have failed from 87 in 2018 to just 27 in 2022,” acting vice-chancellor Professor Wendy Cross said.
“The Federation will continue to offer many of the courses that were part of the BA program … and we will redeploy staff where possible.”
The Federation operates two main campuses, in Churchill and Ballarat, as well as other smaller locations.(Supplied: Federation University)
A ‘short-sighted’ move
The move was labeled “short-sighted” by Ballarat-based professional historian Lucy Bracey.
“Cutting off access to this, not only does it limit future students — it particularly disadvantages regional students,” Ms Bracey said.
Professional historian Lucy Bracey believes the fostering of critical thinking is at risk.(Supplied)
She said undertaking a degree in humanities taught young people critical thinking.
“You learn to evaluate sources, to learn to research,” Ms Bracey said.
“You learn to look at what you’re reading, [and] think about who created the source [and] why it was created.
“Critical thinking is allowing you to not just accept what you’re reading in the newspaper or told on the TV.”
Job-ready Graduates to be reviewed
The former federal government decided in 2020 to hike fees dramatically for humanities degrees under its Job-ready Graduates package, which simultaneously reduced the cost of science, engineering, nursing, health, teaching and maths degrees.
A federal Department of Education spokesperson said a “review” into the program would begin in the second half of this year.
“The government will appoint eminent Australians to conduct a universities accord, which will work with universities to consider things like affordability and accessibility,” the spokesperson said.
The Job-ready Graduates package will be reviewed this year.(pexels.com)
Arts apart from the ‘ecosystem’
Queensland University of Technology Professor Sandra Gattenhof was the chief investigator for the Australian Research Council linkage project, The Role of the Creative Arts in Regional Australia: a Social Impact Model.
“From our research it shows that any kind of arts engagement, whether it be the small crafting groups, to big events, to things like courses at regional university … they’re all part of an ecosystem,” Professor Gattenhof said.
“And the minute you take one bit of the ecosystem out, it means… the connections that are within that community begin to fragment.”
She said arts and humanities played a vital role within regional areas to create greater social inclusion.
“Often when we talk about regional community, we often talk about statistics — regional trade and tourism statistics,” Professor Gattenhof said.
“But we forget that arts, culture, and creativity, in and of itself, is a wellbeing indicator.
“If you have that in your community, your community is what we call, ‘thriving’.”
Federation University has blamed low enrollments for ending its Bachelor of Arts program.(ABC News: Mark Leonardi)
A disappointing anniversary
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Victoria’s Education Act, which made education free, secular, and compulsory for young students.
Ms Bracey said it was disappointing to see a reduction in student opportunities in 2022.
“There’s a current thinking in society that is, if you’re not doing something that has an immediate job outcome at the end of it… it’s not worth doing,” she said.
“And there’s so many things wrong with that.
“There are over 500 professional historians, working across Australia, who all have an arts degree background.”
The University of New England vice-chancellor has been charged with the assault of a 16-year-old girl.
Police allege Brigid Heywood assaulted the teenage girl at a club in the NSW town of Armidale on March 8.
The teen was not physically injured during the alleged incident.
Professor Heywood, 65, was issued with a court attendance notice on Monday.
UNE vice-chancellor Brigid Heywood is facing assault charges. Facebook Credit: NCA NewsWire
She is facing charges relating to common assault and offensive behavior near a public place or school.
Professor Heywood has been UNE’s vice-chancellor and chief executive since 2019.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) said it was shocked to learn of the criminal charges.
“Professor Heywood is one of just 39 vice-chancellors of Australia’s public universities. She holds a position of public trust and national significance,” NTEU NSW secretary Damien Cahill said.
The University of New England campus. Facebook Credit: NCA NewsWire
“Professor Heywood is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Nevertheless, the seriousness of the allegations requires an appropriate response.”
The union is calling on Ms Heywood to step aside immediately until an outcome has been decided by the courts.
It says if she doesn’t voluntarily resign, the university should stand her down.
The National Tertiary Education Union is calling for Professor Heywood’s resignation. justin samson Credit: News Corp Australia
“Australians must have confidence that those entrusted with overseeing our public institutions are honest, have integrity and conduct themselves in a proper manner,” Dr Cahill said.
Professor Heywood and The University of New England were contacted for comment.
She will appear at Armidale Local Court on September 26.
Only a few decades ago the Kaurna language was thought to be extinct.
Key points:
The first-ever English to Kaurna dictionary is helping to protect the First Nations language from extinction
South Australia’s Attorney-General says Indigenous languages will play an “increasingly important part” in the state’s education system
The federal government has pledged $14 million for the teaching of First Nations languages in primary schools
Adelaide’s Kaurna people say it was only ever “sleeping.”
Rob Amery from the University of Adelaide has dedicated his life to reviving Kaurna.
He’s just published the first-ever English to Kaurna dictionary.
“I’m confident that if I got run over by a bus tomorrow it would still continue on,” he said.
“People know enough of the language, know enough of the grammar of Kaurna language to be able to continue the work on without me.”
The Kaurna people’s traditional lands extend from South Australia’s Mid North, through Adelaide, and as far south as the bottom of the Fleurieu Peninsula.
The closest thing to a dictionary before now was written by German missionaries in the 1830s, who documented about 2,000 Kaurna words.
Speaking the language was once forbidden by white Australians, and Kaurna all but faded from use by the 1860s.
Futureproofing First Nations languages
Dr Amery said a physical document was vital for the preservation and growth of the language through education in the community and schools.
His mission, alongside co-authors Susie Greenwood and Jasmin Morley, was to turn a 160-year-old handwritten list of words into a modern handbook for Kaurna.
“We’ve included words from other sources that those German missionaries didn’t record,” he said.
“We’ve done a lot of detailed comparative work with neighboring languages so that we can best work out the optimum pronunciation of those words.”
The dictionary includes 4,000 new words created in consultation with local elders and Kaurna speakers.
For example, mukarntu (computer) comes from a combination of mukamuka (brain) and karntu (lightning).
Until now, school students have learned from a small pool of Kaurna speakers, but several of these have died in recent years.
Charlie Waarruyu Griffiths, who works in secondary education, has been taking part in weekly language sessions at Tauondi Aboriginal College in Port Adelaide.
She said tongue position was the trickiest part to master.
“The Australian-English language is quite a flat tongue, and to do the Kaurna you have to actually put it in different positions and try and make those different sounds, so that’s a little bit hard … there’s definitely some that we get tongue-tied over,” she said.
An ‘increasingly important part’ of education and reconciliation
Dr Amery’s next challenge is training enough speakers who can pass on the language to future generations.
“More than 80 per cent of South Australian schools are in Kaurna country, and they’re desperately looking for teachers of Kaurna,” he said.
“We need 20 times as many people as we’ve got at the moment.”
He wants Australia to take inspiration from New Zealand’s treatment of Māori culture.
“If we look across the Tasman, in New Zealand every schoolteacher has to know some Māori language,” he said.
“It’s become part of New Zealand life, not just Māori life but New Zealand life. I think that’s the way it should be here as well.”
Kyam Maher says work is underway to bring Aboriginal language to all tiers of education.(abcnews)
At a federal level, the Albanese government has pledged $14 million to teach First Nations language at 60 primary schools.
Schools can apply to join the program, which is funded for the next three years.
South Australian Attorney-General Kyam Maher is the first Aboriginal person to hold the attorney-general position anywhere in the country.
He said Indigenous languages would play an “increasingly important part” in the state’s education system.
“I know my kids as they’ve gone through primary school in Adelaide have learned about Kaurna culture, but also learned Kaurna words and Kaurna language, and I think we’ll see that increasingly in the future,” he said.
“And that will only help with reconciliation.
“It allows for Aboriginal people to have more pride, reclaiming who they are in a greater and more meaningful way.”
Katrina Karlapina Power hopes the Kaurna dictionary becomes an important step in reconciliation.(ABC: Angus Randall)
Strengthening identity through language
Katrina Karlapina Power created the artwork for the dictionary’s front cover.
She has been using the revived Kaurna language to bring back traditional birth and death ceremonies.
“As a result of invasion, that language was taken away from us, we were forbidden to speak it, so part of this claim of language is to strengthen identity,” she said.
“This is for Australia and those living in Kaurna country.”
“We need white Australians to get over that fear of first contact and come into our camp and learn our way and our language so this isn’t just a thing for Aboriginal people, for Kaurna people.”
